


Attention to Detail

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [156]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Caretaking, Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, M/M, POV Loki (Marvel), Reader-Insert, Vacation, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27093547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: Being tucked away in your apartment with you during quarantine means that Loki has a front-row seat to the effect your job is having on you. So he—the spoiled prince, the second son of Odin—finds ways to look after his precious mortal.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [156]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 11
Kudos: 140





	Attention to Detail

You were spectacular. Absolutely indefatigable. Even as the mortal world began to crumble to pieces around you, Loki watched as you carried on as normal. You went to work. You cooked and cleaned. You touched him and smiled at him as though nothing was changing, as though you weren’t putting yourself at risk every time you stepped outside. He longed to make things better for you. If he were still a prince in Asgard, he’d have the means to provide for you so he could ask you to stay here where it was safe and rest on your sofa with him beneath a blanket. But even if he still had any of that wealth from his home world, it wouldn’t have meant a thing here in Midgard. And he was somehow certain that, even if he did have the ability to look after you for the rest of your life, you’d never stop working anyhow. Especially now that things were changing, he knew that you thought there was so much to do. People relied on you to get the help they needed. Loki knew he’d never convince you to stop working.

So he kept an eye on you instead.

When he’d first come to stay with you early in your city’s lockdown, you’d agreed to take turns cooking. You relented and said you’d let him make dinner for you every other night instead of just having to stand by and watch with concern as you stood at the stove looking exhausted. But he took to “stealing” your nights more often. When he did, you would come in from outside and see him standing at the stove and you’d apologize to him in a voice that betrayed just how tired you were. That only served to make him even more glad that he’d stepped in. He’d take you into his arms and kiss you so sweetly and tell you to go put on more comfortable clothes because dinner was nearly done. He always expected you to put up a fight, but, more and more lately, you were letting your shoulders slump forward ever so slightly before pulling him in for one more lingering kiss and then disappearing into the bedroom.

You hid it well: your pain, your exhaustion. Loki told himself that the only reason he hadn’t noticed it right away was because he was otherwise distracted by adapting to life in your cozy home with you. Or maybe because it wasn’t there at first. Either way, soon enough, he started to recognize the curve in your back and the tightness in your face. You were never anything but sweet to him, but, more and more lately, he started to hear an edge in your voice, especially when you talked about work. 

At first, he tried to get you to talk about it. He’d never been much for talking about his feelings for hours on end, but he’d read enough to know that mortals could benefit from such things. He started asking questions about work or your colleagues or simply about how your days had gone. He got the sense that you humored him a bit, but it was impossible to miss the way you slowly grew uncomfortable with so much of his attention on that aspect of your life. He knew you didn’t like to talk about yourself. He could only assume that talking about something as stressful as work was even less pleasant for you.

So he started finding other ways to care for you. You carried so much tension in your shoulders, you precious thing, and every single time that he put his hands on you in hopes of soothing some of the knots in your muscles, you whimpered before melting into him with a whispered “Thank you.” He treasured that. Though he’d never speak it aloud, he couldn’t get over how delicate your mortal body was. The slightest injury could be the end of you. It was hard to keep himself from crushing you against his chest in the mornings and refusing to let you go out there where so many dangers laid in wait. But you were also strong. You could withstand great amounts of pain, of uncertainty, of damage and, knowing you, you could do it with a smile. He heard the way pain could creep into your breathy moans when he massaged your shoulders but you kept coming back to him and submitting to his touch, so he continued to offer it.

In his idle moments, his mind began drifting to a rather pet-fantasy of his: the idea of stripping off all of your clothing and lying you down on the bed so that he could take proper care of the rest of the knotted muscles in your back.

You did things like that to him. Once upon a time, he was so different. Stranded in a world, in a family, in which nothing had ever felt certain to him, he had lived life as an empty void. He’d Wanted so desperately—and so endlessly. Nothing was guaranteed to him, so he wanted it all. His younger self, he would never have thought twice about another’s discomfort. He would never have longed to smooth his hands along someone else’s back simply in hopes of soothing their pain. He would have devoured you. If he’d known you in his younger years, he would certainly have taken you for all you were worth, only to discard you when he thought he’d had enough. Shame often filled him when he thought of his younger years, and horror at the maltreatment he’d offered so many who’d he thought of as “below him”, but already you knew him well enough to sense when he was in those moods, and how to pull him out of them.

Watching you as carefully as he did, he began to notice the signs perhaps even before you did. You weren’t eating as much. It was a gradual change. Some evenings, you’d leave some portion of food on your plate as you sat back in your chair to smile at him and thank him once again for dinner. The sack that you carried your lunches in began to come back rather full. He made the mistake, only once, of asking you over dinner if you thought you needed to lose weight, and then spent the rest of the night cursing himself for the confusion that crept along your face, and then the worry. No, you certainly were _not_ trying to lose weight, he realized, and now you thought that _he_ thought you should.

He spent the rest of that evening finding ways to assure you that he loved your body, every perfect inch of it, and vowing to himself to keep his suspicions quiet.

Sleep came next—or the lack thereof. Some nights, you were fine. You would curl up beside him beneath your covers and put your head on his shoulder and it would only be a matter of time before he heard your breathing turn into those quiet almost-snores that he treasured so dearly. As he was not Midgardian, he did not require nearly as much sleep as you did, but he still liked to join you in bed. He liked holding you as you drifted to sleep. Perhaps he derived a rather selfish pleasure in knowing that you felt so safe with him, so comfortable, that you would allow yourself to slip into a state of such vulnerability with him right there beside you. He kept a book on the nightstand near “his side” of the bed, but, in truth, he spent most nights simply lying there with you and taking in the newness of...everything.

But, with increasing frequency, he noticed that you started to have more trouble falling asleep. You did your best, of course. You would take up your position in his arms and sigh with something like relief, but it didn’t take long before you were squirming to make yourself more comfortable. If you turned onto your other side so that you were facing away from him, he liked to pull you up against his body and bury his nose in your hair. On the nights where that didn’t work, you would kick the covers off and apologize to him before flopping onto your stomach so you could growl into your pillow. His mind would flicker back to that same fantasy of his, but he could usually content himself with caressing your back and drawing simple patterns against your skin. 

When you did sleep, it was often fitful at best. He became uncomfortably familiar with the sounds you made when caught up in a nightmare. On occasion, he could pull you a little closer and stop the dream before it became something worse, but there were still too many nights where you woke up with a gasp. You told him you never remembered what you’d dreamed about, which sort of felt fair, given how fiercely he always refused to tell you what haunted him. Still, he hated the helplessness that he felt every time he heard you stir in your sleep, heard you whimper. 

After that mistake at dinner, he knew enough to keep his thoughts to himself for a while. So he watched you move through your days with an ever-increasing weight on your shoulders, and he said nothing. He watched you come home and sink into yourself like you’d already expended all of your energy on simply getting through the day, and he held his tongue. He watched you try so hard to hide all of this from him even as stress and exhaustion began to dim the light in your eyes when you smiled at him. 

There was no single incident which spurred him to action, but he was worried about you. He didn’t want you to fall ill. So one night in bed, when you turned away from him with a sigh and let him put his arms around you, he kissed the back of your neck and found the words he needed to say.

“I think you need a vacation, love.”

You laughed without mirth and slid the fingers of one of your hands through his. “That’d be nice, huh? Sun and sand and beaches? Or—no, wait, do you like beaches? I know you’re...you know, part Frost Giant. Do they get too warm?”

Sweet thing. Precious thing. Here he was, in the middle of trying to tell you that you were burning yourself out by caring so much for so many people, and all you were getting out of it was concern about whether he could enjoy the beach? He kissed your neck again, and then sank his teeth gently into your skin in hopes of quieting you. It worked. Your breathy groan made him smile, but he did not forget his mission.

“I mean it. You can’t carry on like this forever. You’re getting so tired and I’m worried about you.” Was that unfair of him? He knew perfectly well that you’d brush off every last argument he tried to make about your own health, but hearing about how it made him feel was enough to make you pause. “Your beautiful smile, it’s fading. I’m watching you wilt. I can’t stand it, darling. Please, take some time.”

“Loki...” He heard the struggle in your voice. You wanted, so badly, to please him, but your work ethic wasn’t making it easy. That stubbornness of yours, as infuriating as it could be, was a big part of what had first attracted him to you. “I can’t. Things are just...they’re crazy right now. It’s all hands on deck. I can’t just abandon everybody.”

But he heard something in your voice. A waver. It made his heart beat a little more quickly in his chest. You were not approaching this with the same bullheaded determination with which you faced everything else in your life. He could only assume that you knew you were burning out. He smiled against your shoulder and tightened his arms around you in an embrace. “You can do it now, dear heart, and have time to plan for your extended absence and give your colleagues the chance to prepare for it, or you can do it without warning some time from now when you collapse from overworking yourself and I have to chain you to this very bed to make you rest. Wouldn’t it be better to do it now?”

You sighed again and shrunk down a little smaller, burrowing against him like he could shield you from the discomfort of having to care for yourself. If you were anyone else, he might already be celebrating his win, but he held back. 

“Where would we go? The world is still fucked...” The uncertainty in your voice, and how small you sounded here in this big dark room, made him want, more than ever, to keep you safe. Did you know that? Did you know what you did to him?

“Anywhere you want.” He spoke the truth. “If you’ll agree to do this for me—and for yourself—then I will make it my mission to take you wherever it is you wish to go. I will get us there, and quickly, and safely.” Had he ever meant anything more in his life? Truth be told, he was not the biggest fan of beaches and tropical weather, but the idea of watching you lounge on a towel by the sea with a drink in your hand _was_ tempting.

You were quiet for some time. When he shifted a bit to get a better look at your face, you were gazing off into the darkness as you chewed on your lower lip. When you caught him looking, you met his eyes guiltily. “What if I don’t want to go anywhere? What if I want to stay right here with you?”

He could not stifle his laughter this time. You pulled away from him a bit, but only so that you could lie on your back and get a better look at him. He reached up to smooth some of your hair away from your face. “I am offering you the world and you want to stay here?”

“With you.” Your voice was strong now, though still gentle and clear in the night. “You’re all I need.”

The earnestness in your face, and the way that you looked at him, made his heart flutter in his chest. It wasn’t hard to tell that you were telling the truth. His words caught in his throat, but he did his best to hide that by ducking in for a kiss. Something deep inside him recognized the neediness in your lips, and when he finally pulled away from you, he pressed his forehead against yours.

“I’ll not deny you, then. If you’d like to stay here _with me_ , then I’ll be here. I’ll always be here.” How in all the nine realms had he ever done anything to deserve anyone like you? Gently, he kissed each of your eyelids closed, and then smiled when he pulled back to see that you did not open them again. “Does this mean you’ll do it?”

You nodded and a slow smile curved your lips. “I’ll put in my request first thing tomorrow. I’ve got...a lot of vacation time saved up.”

That night, you slept more peacefully than you had in a long time, and Loki held you all the while.


End file.
